Salman Akhtar is a professor of psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College and Scholar-in-Residence at the Inter-Act Theater Company in Philadelphia. He lectures widely and is the recipient of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Associationís Best Paper of the Year Award. Akhtar has written many books on psychiatry and psychoanalysis, including Immigration and Identity, the inspiration for the play Parinday (Birds), recently broadcast on the BBC. He has published six volumes of poetry in English and Urdu.